Of Interest

Five years ago someone wrote “All Niggers Must Die” on the door of a bathroom on the fourth floor of Prospect House. (Record coverage here, here, and here.) That someone was almost certainly student of color and campus activist Jess Torres ’12. Evidence here: pdf. Let’s spend 5 days reviewing the case. Today is Day 2.

Michael: While the case remains publicly unsolved, Parker McClelland, a student at Williams, had a unique perspective on the event.

Parker: So I lived in Prospect dorm on the 4th and a half floor. I lived a ways down the hall from the bathroom that the graffiti was written in.

Michael: While most students were out partying, Parker, a varsity Basketball player had to stay in .

Parker: I was just watching TV, you know, waiting to get tired so I could go to sleep.

Michael: Then he saw something that would come to haunt him in the upcoming weeks.

Parker: I saw a girl up there that I knew, umm, I knew quite well actually, because of connections she’s had with people on my Basketball team, and I saw her up at the end of that hallway near that bathroom, umm, I thought it was a little peculiar that she didn’t come down the hallway to say hi to me or you know, just exchange any casual greetings, because that’s what I think I would have normally expected to happen with a friend who was up on my floor. But she just went down the further stairwell away from me after we made eye contact.

…

Parker: I didn’t make anything of it. I figured it was homecoming, people were out, you know, drinking, partying, here and there. I didn’t make anything of it.

Michael: But once campus safety and security interviewed him, he sent the student a text message warning her that he had mentioned her in an affidavit.

Parker: In reply to my message she said, “Ohh, haha, I forgot I was up there smoking with you that night.” Basically that she forgot that she was up there doing something with me. And this was probably a week and a half after the night I saw her up there, she said she forgot seeing me up there, she mentioned that she forgot that we were doing something together, which we weren’t doing, hanging out or doing something together, smoking was what she said, which wasn’t the case, didn’t happen that night, so I was kind of confused by that at first.

We have an eye witness who places Jess Torres ’12 at the scene of the crime, during the very narrow window when the graffiti was written and with no good reason for being there. Torres then tries to cover her tracks. And the College still claims that there is “no evidence” for a hoax? There is a juicy story, one that might generate national attention, for an enterprising Record reporter . . .

I don’t think we need to worry about Record reporters taking any advice from DDF. It’s weird, though, that students who are “hard” on social justice are “soft” on criminal justice. Justice is no longer blind, but guided by the light of equality.